Shadows and Lies
by Professor Maka
Summary: In a world within a world, where angels and demons are real and shadows lurk around every corner, they are opposites. Can two who should be enemies find the truth in a web of lies?


Everyone is searching for meaning.

With every breath, every half step and misstep, each broken limb and shattered heart, they search, claw, fight their way towards purpose.

She always has. With tenacity. With desperation. There has to be a reason why. A reason her mama left, a reason her papa drinks, a reason for anything, for everything.

Maka is searching still when she finds him, her quarry, her latest target in an endless list of the twisted, the corrupt, the wrong. Even those who hide their depravity beneath false luster can't hide from _her_ , for tricks of the body can never mask the underneath underneath, the truth found only in the soul.

There are rumors of a halfling in the area, his infernal blood driving him slowly mad. There have been disappearances, but no solid proof, so the Agency sends Maka, who can read the soul so well that no other proof will be necessary. Her first day in the small town in the middle of the wilderness she sees nothing, _feels_ nothing.

Then she feels it, all at once, the depravity, the sin, the cloud of death that clings to the lost one, and she acts, streaking through the woods in a flash of red and black and vengeance. There are three souls-angry, ravenous, frightened-but only one is her mark, only one has the thick taint of corruption. She slows, keeping to the shadows, moving to the edge of the sun dappled clearing where she hears angry voices, fearful voices, along with thrashing. A girl of no more than ten is tied in the center, battered and bruised and bathed in a beam of light that has managed to fight its way through the trees. She looks at Maka with wide, desperate eyes and flinches as two figures pass in front of her, scuffling in the scattered light of the clearing. One has a wicked looking machete, but his appearance is otherwise ordinary. He wears jeans and a button up and his brown hair is neatly cropped. The other is anything but normal in spite of being dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, with wild white hair and his eyes glowing a menacing red. His lips are pulled back into a snarl to reveal a mouth full of unnaturally sharp fangs. She has found her halfling, a man with infernal blood gone mad.

"Help me, he's trying to kill me!" the man in the button down looks towards her and shouts. Readying her own weapon, a scythe, deadly as sin and twice as sharp, Maka is about to intervene when the halfling yelps out in pain, dropping his own sad excuse for a weapon-it appears to be an oversized piece of deadwood-and scrambling back to land at the feet of the girl, his blood flowing black from his shoulder where the machete has cut deep.

Their eyes meet, his widen, and he gasps, "Help," before collapsing in front of the girl. Maka can feel the power boiling below his skin, raw and angry, and knows she must act quickly, but the plea in his eyes, the fear and desperation give her pause. Something is off, wrong, and-as the other man charges forward, she realizes what.

The corruption does not belong to the halfling, but to the human who is about to kill him.

She knows what she must do.

Maka charges, unnaturally quick, just as the man with the machete is about to cleave both figures below him in two. Her scythe slices through him smoothly, like a warm knife through butter, and the look of utter shock on his face is his last as his body dissipates, leaving only an angry red soul behind, crackling with malevolent power. After murmuring a quick incantation, the soul is absorbed into her weapon before it can do more harm, and Maka slowly, warily approaches the halfling and the girl both. She does not lower her scythe as she scans their souls. For his part, the halfling tries to get to his feet, and when he can't, remains planted in front of the girl from his place on his knees, eying Maka just as warily.

"Who are you?" he croaks, voice thick with the blood he spits out just after. The girl behind him is as ordinary as she appears, but his soul is not. It is... Strange. Conflicted. But not evil, not tainted, no. Not yet.

"Maka," she offers, voice neither loud nor soft, yet it feels like a shout in the eerie quiet of the clearing, their breath, their every shift painfully audible.

"Are you going to kill me?" he asks, no more than a low rasp as she sees his strength ebbing before her eyes, the fire, the anger draining with his very lifeblood.

"I'm not sure," she says. Honesty was the best she could offer. "I'm going to restrain you, if you'll let me, and I'm going to look at your shoulder, and then-then we'll see."

He swallows and nods, offering his hands in front of him in supplication.

"You won't fight?" she asks, leery despite his seeming cooperation.

"I won't," he agrees, and there is no malice in his soul, no deception, only fear and the barest sliver of something like hope.

The girl behind him is sobbing softly, but as Maka comes nearer she gasps, "Don't hurt him, he saved me! Please!"

Looking between the two, then settling her gaze on the girl just visible behind him, Maka nods, voice soft. "It's okay, I won't. Are you-are you hurt?" The girl shakes her head no and sobs again, and Maka pulls a zip tie from her pocket and moves to bind the halfling's wrists together. True to his word, he does not struggle, so when she is through, she hunches beside him and examines his shoulder. The shirt is shredded and dark with his blood, so she rips more of it away and pulls a cloth from her small satchel. She has minimal first aid supplies on hand and any attempt at more could kill him, so it will have to do. As she wipes away the blood, she finds that instead of the gaping wound she expects, there is only an angry red line. He is already healing.

Of course. Just as those with celestial blood, infernals are often fast healers.

Still, he looks woozy with blood loss and Maka isn't convinced she shouldn't just kill him. Her mark is supposed to be a half demon, and unlike the tainted human she just took down, this man fits the bill. While his soul might not be corrupted yet, with the thick undercurrent of madness running through it, it is only a matter of time.

This halfling is a rapidly ticking time bomb. Maybe it would best, merciful even, to end the anguish so clear in his soul, to save the lives he will doubtless take and _soon._

She hesitates. There is something in his soul that bothers her, calls to her. Protocol will support her if she chooses to end him-half infernals are on the kill list as a general rule, and this one was specifically targeted-yet something nags at her. Well, she has never been one to act based only on blood and potential. She prefers to judge by deeds, and so she will now.

Decision made, she meets his gaze again. He is staring at her, eyes unfocused, expression blank.

"You look like an angel," he says, voice sleepy as his body begins to shift to the ground in exhaustion.

With the light filtering through the trees to rest on her shoulders, perhaps Maka does resemble the angel of death she is sometimes called. She frowns down at the now unconscious man before her, cast in heavy shadow, and moves to untie and comfort the child who has been caught up in this living nightmare as she tries to figure out what to do next.


End file.
